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Coming Soon To The Biden Campaign: “Binders Full Of Women”

This article is more than 3 years old.

How to pass the time until the presidential campaign returns in earnest?

How about a little vice presidential speculation – and why Joe Biden’s selection process could differ from those of recent nominees?

Let’s begin with the question of when so-called “veepstakes” speculation will reach full contagion. Biden on Friday told a virtual fundraiser audience that his campaign plans to announce a selection/winnowing committee “sometime in the middle” of April “to oversee the nominating vetting process for a running mate.” If so, that committee will have the better part of four months to come up with a choice as the Democratic National Committee has been pushed back to the week of August 17.

How soon could Biden announce his pick? A review of all non-incumbent nominees’ campaigns going back to 1980 shows a pattern. 

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton each made their choice known with a week of the starts of their parties’ national conventions. So too did Barack Obama in 2008 (announcing the choice of Joe Biden just two days before that year’s convention in Denver) as well as John McCain (Sarah Palin likewise was sprung on an unsuspecting electorate only two days before the GOP convention in Minneapolis).    

Further examples of the “seven days” rule of pre-convention rollouts: George W. Bush tapping Dick Cheney six days before the 2000 Republican convention; in the same election, Al Gore going with Joe Lieberman seven days before their convention. In 1996, Bob Dole opted for Jack Kemp two days before the kickoff of their convention. In 1992, Bill Clinton partnered with Gore four days before that year’s Democratic convention. In 1988, Michael Dukakis chose Lloyd Bentsen six days before the 1988 Democratic National Convention.

I’d caution: this is not a hard-and-fast rule of presidential politics as other nominees have taken their running announcements to opposite extremes.

The late George H.W. Bush twice found himself in the middle of convention drama – in 1988, introducing Dan Quayle on the second day of that year’s convention in New Orleans (Quayle’s overly enthusiastic response would prove to be problematic); and, in 1980, becoming Ronald’s Reagan choice on the third day of that years’ GOP convention (Reagan making an unprecedented nomination-night appearance before the arena audience to announce that he’d chosen Bush).

Other nominees went in the opposite direction — taking care of their vice presidential business long before their conventions.

In 2004, John Kerry presented John Edwards a full 20 days before the Democratic convention in Boston. In 2012, Mitt Romney trotted out Paul Ryan 16 days before the opening gavel in Tampa (Romney’s selection process maybe is one that Biden’s campaign has noticed – an April list of candidates narrowed to a shorter list by early May; by early July, the campaign weighing serious contenders). 

If you’re an aficionado of presidential politics, you’ll notice one nominee is missing: Walter Mondale. And therein lies a cautionary tale for Biden.

In 1984, Mondale found himself in a tight spot as the Democratic nominee-in-waiting. The primary competition had lasted longer than he’d liked, with Gary Hart’s upstart challenge playing out through early June’s final primaries in California and New Jersey, less than six weeks before the Democratic convention in San Francisco.

Moreover, Mondale was under pressure to shatter a glass ceiling by choosing the first female vice presidential nominee of either major party.

That pressure reportedly materialized in the form of a $50,000 effort by the National Women’s Political Caucus that included direct-mail lobbying and organizing floor leaders and whips for an anticipated convention floor fight if Miondale were to go in a phallocentric direction.

The Mondale campaign also had to contend with a “Gender Gap Action Campaign” meant to place public pressure on the nominee (much of that pressure coming from Eleanor Smeal, the former head of the National Organization for women).  Other feminist organizations and prominent Democratic figures such as former New York Rep. Bella Abzug attempted to put the screws to Democratic officeholders and state party leaders nationwide.

The strategizing worked, with Mondale choosing Geraldine Ferraro four days before the convention’s start. However, it also turned into a media circus, with reporters camped out in front of Mondale’s suburban St. Paul home waiting for prospective running mates to pull into the driveway. And it begged the question of how much of the decision was driven by virtue as opposed to the political necessities of placating the party’s base and trying to animate a struggling campaign (Mondale, at the time, trailing Ronald Reagan by almost 20 points in some national polls).

In 2020, what separates Biden from Mondale isn’t that he’s being pushed into a corner as much as he’s already in a bind of his own making – no outside pressure necessary. That’s because Biden promised, during the March presidential debate, to put a woman on the ticket. To break that pledge and choose a male would be politically catastrophic.

The question thus becomes not whether to choose a woman for the ticket, but rather how long of a list to compile – and when to start revealing the a-listers?

Let’s assume the remaining Democratic primaries last through at least June 23 (the new date for New York to vote), or even the fifth and final Tuesday in June. That leaves the Biden campaign with the better part of seven to eight weeks to keep the media in suspense. Does Team Biden make the big announcement at some point in July, assuming campaigning is back to normal and the ticket could make a big public appearance? Or does it let the speculation play out through July, leading to a more orthodox announcement in early August?

And there’s the question of how large a pool of candidates that Biden wants to share with the public – not the number of candidates it considers internally, but how many names it shares with the media.

Here’s a list of 10 possibilities courtesy of CNN: former Georgia gubernatorial hopeful Stacey Abrams; Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin; Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms; Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth; New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham; California Sen. Kamala Harris; Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar; Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto; Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren; and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (she rules over a must-have swing state and, maybe also enticing for Biden, Trump really doesn’t like her).

And here’s a list of 12 possibilities courtesy of Politico with three new names: Florida Rep. Val Demings, Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly and Obama national security advisor Susan Rice.

Vogue fashionably tailored its list to just six women, with Texas Rep. Veronica Escobar the only new addition (she replaced Beto O’Rourke in Congress).

This Washington Examiner list adds one more: Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema. So too does this list courtesy of LGBTQ Nation, which mentions California Rep. Katie Porter (she’s the only single mother in Congress).   

Finally, another CNN list that adds New Hampshire Sens. Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen to the mix, along with former Justice Department head Sally Yates and (you may be wondering why she hasn’t been mentioned up to this point) former First Lady Michelle Obama.  

That’s 20 women who, in theory, could be on the first long list that the Biden campaign compiles later this moth – and it doesn’t include the likes of Oprah Winfrey (a past favorite of Trump’s) or other candidates from the private sector or other nonconventional routes.

“Binders full of women,” anyone?

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